In life we will experience hurtful times. Many of those hurts will come from other people. Rather it be a friend, a peer, a family member, or a stranger, the words and actions of others can hurt us deeply, or even traumatize us. There is no way to avoid being hurt in life but we can learn to process and deal with the emotions and events in a way that it doesn’t affect our entire lives.

When we do not know what to do when we have been emotionally hurt we can cause ourselves even more pain, form wrong beliefs about ourselves, become a victim, and/or get stuck at the point of our pain.. which none of these things serve us well and it allows that person to continue to hurt us everyday of our lives. But the good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. We can learn to work through the emotions and release them. We can move past the pain and not allow the other person to continue to hurt us.

Sometimes just having more wisdom can allow us to see things from a different perspective and help us to be able to deal with the emotional pain. Often times we will think that there was something that we did, or that there is something wrong with us, that caused the person to do what they did. We may think that somehow it was our fault. But the truth is that hurting people hurt people. When people have had bad things done to them they can do things that cause other people the same pain that they have. The reasons behind their actions could be many different things but the point is that when a person does things that hurt other people they are acting out of their own pain. They may want someone to hurt as bad as they do.. They may be acting out the ways that they learned to be because it was done to them. It doesn’t make it right and it doesn’t excuse what they did but knowing that one fact can help us to not take it so personally.

Sometimes we need to actually sit in the pain and allow ourselves to feel the emotions. Allowing ourselves to actually feel all the different emotions under the pain will help us to process the emotions and be able to let them go. Under all pain is more emotions that we need to recognize and work through. It may be fear, frustration, disbelief, agony, hatred, or many other ones but there is always more than just the pain/hurt. It is okay to have different emotions and to recognize that you feel those things. It is okay, and also a must, that we allow ourselves to feel all of the emotions and to sit in them for a period of time. But we have to make sure that we do not linger on in the emotions for an extended amount of time.. Until we do that we can not release and move on from them.

We can not allow the actions or words of others to affect our lives in a negative way. We may not be able to control what others choose to do but we can control the way that we choose to respond and the affect that it has on us. We can choose to work through the emotions and release them so that it doesn’t have a negative impact on our lives. We can choose to be the bigger person, the Victor, instead of allowing the other person make us a victim. The Holy Spirit will counsel, support, comfort, sit by and help you heal from and let go of any hurt that you have. All you have to do is ask.